


A Sly Bird I Once Loved

by SweetCrazy_DramaQueen



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:57:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetCrazy_DramaQueen/pseuds/SweetCrazy_DramaQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long years have passed in which it was impossible to speak to her. But on this special night, he finally gets the chance to make amends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sly Bird I Once Loved

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the only One-Shot I’ve ever accomplished in my life and probably the only one ever. My fanfic ideas quickly turn into multi-chapter stories. And while I do have a longer fic in mind for this special and beautiful ship, this is an appetizer I managed to write out in one sitting. 
> 
> Spoiler Alert, should you not have finished the damn game. 
> 
> I hate Ubisoft.

 

**This is for all those heartbroken shippers who drowned along on SS Kiddway Titanic.**

* * *

_London, 1735_

Jenny was turning eighteen in a fortnight. Edward remembered at least that much. The last time he forgot Jenny’s birthday, she didn’t speak to him for a month. He had to buy her a pony to make her at least forgive him. An idea he wouldn’t have come up on his own had it not been for Tessa.

She was lying next to him on the bed. Dark hair spread along the white linen pillow and sound asleep she was, but Edward recalled the last conversation she had before she took to bed. It was about Jenny, which is why he was still thinking of her while his wife was sleeping away.

“Jenny’s turning eighteen soon.” She said, braiding her hair to prepare for bed.

Edward couldn’t believe his young daughter was getting old so fast. As if it was yesterday that he had met her for the first time when she was eight. “Indeed.”

Tessa gave him a pointed stare with a little smile on her heart shaped face. “Well?”

He blinked. “Well, what?”

“Well, what are we going to get her?”

Edward was immensely fortunate that Tessa had taken a great liking towards Jenny, the daughter of his late wife Caroline. It could be that mayhaps she considers Jenny as her own. Haytham surely sees her as his beloved big sister.

“I think she already has a dollhouse.”

Tessa gasped loudly, but it was one of those dramatic feminine gasp she was so fond of performing. The little smile hadn’t vanished and she softly slapped his arm when she added herself to the bed. “She’s turning eighteen, Edward, not ten. She’s a woman grown now.”

“Is she already?” He could honestly say that he did not like the sound of his baby girl turning into a woman grown. Grown women do things he preferred Jenny would avoid the whole of her life. He’s seen all kinds of grown women, he would know.

His wife uhu’d. “In fact, I’ve heard she’ll soon be approached by a young man. It might be he would want to court her or even ask her hand in marriage.”

Tessa seemed so elated by the prospect of Jenny being a married lady. “Is that true? Tell me his name then, so I can shoot him meself.”

She did that dramatic gasps again. “You’ll do no such thing. I’ll let you know that I’ve done my inquisition and I’ve come to the conclusion that Thomas Waldorf is the young man interested in our sweet Jenny. And he’s a fine young man indeed, from an honourable family, lives in a beautiful estate and-“ This is where she started to whisper. “He has an inheritance of ten-thousands pounds a year. Can you believe that? Our Jenny will be settled for life!”

“Is this really all that important? Tell me, wife, is that all what you considered of me before you accepted my proposal?”

Tessa pretended to think by tapping a finger to her chin. “All that, but it was your handsome face that made me marry you, Kenway.” As she was leaning down to kiss him, the sound of his last name triggered another face to appear on Tessa’s, one that peculiarly looked much like her own.

As quick as it came it ended along with their kiss. “We still haven’t decided what to get for Jenny’s birthday.”

Tessa chuckled. “Mayhaps we should hand her over her dowry and her treasury for an up-coming wedding.”

Why were women so fixated with marriage? “How about I buy her another pony?”

“I heard Haytham mentioning something of a pianoforte.”

Ah, trust Haytham to come up with something sound. “Who would have thought I’d have such a clever boy? A pianoforte is much more appropriate. I’d wager one of those open-winged ones Jenny loves to swoon about.” He should buy Haytham a new toy as well, for all the good the boy says for his age. Only eight and twice as wise as his old man will ever be.

“It is settled then. We’ll look for such a piano on the morrow.” That was the last thing Tessa said before she dwelled asleep and left Edward to his musings.

Jenny’s birthday and smart little Haytham. Him own children he wouldn’t have thought ever to father. Taking the King’s Pardon was probably the best Edward Kenway had ever done. Had he not, he would’ve died a pirate. Then all the riches he gathered would mean nothing and he never would have known his daughter. He never would’ve met Tessa and gotten Haytham on her. He should be blessed, unlike so many friends that he lost.

And blessed he was indeed with his new family and his new life.

Slowly, quietly, he fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes, there was a flash of white that blinded him. He blinked a few bit times and a second or two later, he realized he was staring straight at the burning sun. It hurt to look at it, so he closed his eyes again, trying to soothe his vision.

A seagull screamed in the not-so-far distance and the waves lapped calmly at the sandy shore of the beach. The familiar scent of ocean salt was in the air as well as the smoke of a campfire close to him. Then came more sounds; laughter of men, folk singing, the cling-clang of mugs when there’s a toast and the pop of a rum bottle being uncorked.

Familiar sounds, all not too far from him. Warm sounds of home and happy memories.

But they were wrong. All were wrong and out of place.

He has left these sounds, these smells and the feeling behind him a long time ago. He was in the colourless city of London, with a prissy society and the great difference between the poor and the rich. That was his life now. That was his future.

Yet he was lured by rough company that presented itself somewhere about him. It was what he was. It was who he was.

When he opened his eye, a clear blue sky welcomed him. Seagulls flying about like straight from a memory and palm trees with half-ripe coconuts growing in them. And when he sat up, the crystal clear blue seas stretched out before him. The beach was white, the docks not too far off and many ships docked about with it.

Along with his Jackdaw. A bird he ain’t seen for over ten years. It looked so big, even though Edward knew there were hella bigger brigs out there. But it has been so long...

“Oi, Kenway! Ye gonna lay there in the sun baking all tha day or whot?”

As soon as he heard the voice Edward jumped up and flipped around. There was no one about him. Only birds and some crabs making way for the sea. He could still hear the rowdy voices of a company of men ahead of him. There should be a tavern he guessed, but the voice he heard was right behind him, not two paces away.

Thatch. It was the old voice of the blackbearded pirate, Ed Thatch that called to him. But Edward didn’t see nor hear him anymore.

In the far off, he heard the boisterous laugh of Calico Jack.

He circled around, trying to find the man, but as before he was still alone on the beach of Nassau.

He swallowed thickly. Nassau. The place hadn’t looked like this for years and more. When he last left this haven, it was crawling with disease. Men were openly puking in the streets. Pigs and chickens were dying and soon the city was more a floating germ with scarcely an egg to find. He remembered how hard he fought to find medicine to make the place as it once was.

As it is now. His beloved Nassau.

But how could this be? He was in London not ten minutes ago. In bed, asleep with his wife Tessa. Haytham two rooms down the corridor and Jenny a top floor above them. And now he was in Nassau? A lively, healthy Nassau? And where was Thatch? His friend who grew a black beard akin to a black flag?

For a good whole seconds, Edward couldn’t breathe.

This is a dream. _This is a dream. This is-_

“It could be a dream, aye. Or not. Could be a vision within a fantasy within a dream, mayhaps.”

Once again he flipped around, not believing his ears, but more so, not believing his eyes at the person standing straight in front of him.

“M-Mary?”

Indeed she was. Standing there with a smirk on her red lips, undisguised as James Kidd. She was Mary Read in front of him; her hair was loose, the crimson bandana forgone, even her vest was open to reveal the tattoo between the cleavage of her breasts.

“Aye, Kenway.” She answered him, clear as the day and looked as real as he did.

“Mary?” But he still couldn’t believe this. “How is this… How are you even…?”

She openly stared at him, looking more alive and comfortable than she ever did before. “I dunno man. I’m here. An’ so are you.”

But this was Nassau, before it fell. Before Hornigold and Rogers got to it and rooted all the pirates out. There were all the ships. He recognized _Queen Anne’s Revenge_ out in the bay. The largest ship of the lot. Even Stede Bonnet’s humble brig _The Revenge_ was adrift in front of the Jackdaw.

It wasn’t the first time he had hallucinations though. He couldn’t remember drinking a single drop before going to bed. Hell, he hasn’t drunk a drop of alcohol for the better part of a year or two. This can’t be happening. “I ain’t here and neither are you. I’m in London.” He looked at her. At Mary; lively, breathing, realistic Mary. “And I left you in Great Inagua.”

She smiled and once again Edward’s breath was knocked out of his body by the sight of it. “Aye, mate. And I thank ye for that. I ne’er doubted you woulda take me outta Jamaica.”

His voice was breathless, whispy, quiet. “I told you I wouldn’t leave you.”

Her eyes soften, even more than they were before. “You did.”

He couldn’t believe she was standing in front of him. Talking to him. She had died that day in Kingston. He dragged her out of there himself, even if it had to cost him his life. She was resting in Great Inagua, even today. The closest thing to a home he guessed she ever had. If there was one place he was sure Captain James Kidd would return to was to Great Inagua. The Assassin’s headquarters. And if she was not a pirate then she certainly was an assassin. It was her place.

“Mary-“

“Come. Let’s have a drink, you and I.” She nodded towards the tavern. “Or have ye forgotten how to?”

Edward was still too surprised by her presence to even answer. Dumbly he followed Mary Read through the dusty streets of Nassau to the very tavern they reunited the first time in 1716. The place was crowded as ever, reeking of alcohol and smoke, filled with jolly songs coming from the musicians.

He heard Anne Bonny scold Calico Jack in the distance. He heard Charles Vane’s voice making mock of Stede Bonnet, who in turned simpered a reply. He heard someone toast in the name of Adewale and even Ed Thatch telling one of his famous tales to intimidate and bedazzle young sailor men. He heard the lot of them, but he saw none.

Only Mary, who unceremoniously dumped herself on a wooden chair at an empty table. Though the tavern was crawling with pirates and whores and children alike, it seemed the table was reserved just for him and Mary.

The voices about him huddled and smashed together, as if he was drunk without drinking a sip of it yet. He searched for familiar faces to match the familiar voices but he couldn’t find any of the men who were either long dead or he hasn’t seen in ages.

“Ye won’t find them, Kenway.” Mary spoke to him and he looked at her. A bottle had appeared in front of her out of nowhere and she took a healthy swallow of it. “They are here, yet they are not. Yer eyes are not allowed to see the lot of them yet.”

He took a moment to gather his bearings. “And yet... and yet you are here, Mary. Talking to me, alive.”

“Nay, not alive man. My day had come a long time ago in that prison in Kingston.”

“But what is this place? How are you here?!” He did not believe this was Nassau. This was surreal. This was fantasy.

“Nothing is true, Kenway. Hadn’t I taught ya that? Even this memory, is only permitted.”

Memory? “I do not remember us sitting here, sharin’ a drink privately like this together. I must be dreamin’.”

Mary laughed. Jaysus, how he missed her laugh. It had been years, even before she passed away. It seemed the only thing they had when they met together was her scolding him. Trying to set him on his place, steering him to find a way in this world. Ironic how that only happened after she died.

“It’s neither a dream or a memory, or it could be both. Nothin’ is true, after all.” She pushed the bottle towards Edward and gestured for him to take a sip as well.

He stared at it, not sure if he should drink it. He promised himself to lay off the drink. For Tessa and his children.

“Why look at ya. The great Cap’n Edward Kenway leavin’ a rum out to dry. This must be fantasy, indeed.” She took the bottle for herself, rum coating her lips  and she wiped it dry with the back of her hands.

He forgot how classy a lady she could be.

“It’s been a long time, Mary. I’ve… I’m a changed man. A different man.” No longer the pirate Kenway bringing fear to the West-Indies seas. He was a loyal husband, a protecting father now.

She looked at him. Bangs of black hair falling into her eye. “Aye. And what changed ya?”

“You, mostly.” He didn’t mean to say that. But he did.

She snorted a laugh again. “Hardly to believe, after how much I’ve been grillin’ ya for years, eh? Ye mocked me and me creed straight up in me face, then sailed off ye merry way on yer little Jackdaw there, stealing a man’s hard earned Pieces of Eight and making a fearsome reputation for yourself.”

“Well, there were some Reales in them too, ye know?”

She raised her eyebrows and gave him an once-over. “Reales and Pieces of Eight made Cap’n Edward Kenway into Gentleman Edward Kenway, aye?”

He seemed affronted with that statement. “What’d you mean? I’ve always was a gentleman.”

She shot him a sceptical look. “Ye were neither gentle nor much of a man, you dog.”

He chuckled, finding her words too true to deny. Then again, he found there was hardly a time she wasn’t right. Too smart for her own good she was, and by far smarter than he ever was. “Indeed. I went from pirate to nobleman, more likely.”

“You have a blessed life, Kenway. You survived our Golden Age of Pyracy and became a man with a future and means.” She sounded proud and Edward would have gloated in it, if it didn’t hurt as much.

“Blessed, you say?” He cursed himself instead. He wouldn’t call himself blessed, not by a long shot. Even though it were the very words he described himself with before he came to this wonderland. How fiercely he rejected the words now.

“Is it not?” Mary took the bottle and drank again. She looked surprised that he was so against a statement of truth. “Aye, blessed good sir. Ye got ye a handsome wife, got to know your equally handsome daughter and gotten yourself a very clever son.”

She had it all wrong. “Blessed? No. You weren’t with me.” He hissed it at her, more broken than angry. And it didn’t even occur to him to ask how she knew about Tessa or about his children.

She paused a moment, her expression fading into one of sincerity. “I told you that I would be with ya, Edward.” His name on her lips got his throat to swell up until there was a stone lodged in it. “And I’ve been with you ever since.”

“You died.” That fact still cut him, every time he thought about it, even more than a decade later after her death. “You, of everyone, shouldn’t have died. You shouldn’t had to go before me.” And then he couldn’t stop the following words even if he wanted to. “Not without me.”

He tried to look at her, but she was keeping her head bent. If it was out of sadness or guilt, he did not know, but he wanted her to look at him. Too long he had been denied the sight of her. He didn’t want her to hide from him any longer. “Look at me, Mary.” He wanted to stay silent but he asked anyway and it sounded more a command than a request.

She did as he said though. Her eyes were full of remorse and sadness and dear Jaysus, even longing. “It wouldn’t have been right, Edward. ‘twas me time and I hadn’t left ya. My day had come but you didn’t let me die in vain. You believed in our creed.”

“Aye, I did.” It was a sore jest that he only became a true Assassin in kind after she had passed. “But it was too late. You didn’t see me when I was accepted into the Brotherhood.”

Her voice took a note much up-beat. “Who said I didn’t see, eh? I was there, aye. Ah Tabai granted you the dart-rope, did he not? Him welcoming you to our Brotherhood was what I always knew would happen one day, Edward. I may not ‘ave been physically there, but I was with you as I said I would.”

It was the third time she said that she was with him. He believed her. If only, through all the years, he believed it sooner.

“I was always there.”

Edward reached for the bottle in her hand and took a big swig of it. Ah, the sour taste of rum, how it brought back the memories of golden days. “It’s empty.” He turned the bottle upside down and not a drop fell from it.

Mary shot him a smile, signalled for another bottle to whomever in the distance. A woman brought a new one, a whore most likely, one who was clearly sending Edward erotic looks and gestures, but the man only had eyes for Mary. Whoever the whore was, she vanished away as if she was never there, leaving a full bottle for them to drink again.

Mary slipped the bottle towards her own mouth before Edward could grab it. “Now that’s a sight I will prolly ne’er get used to. Cap’n Kenway not chasing after every woman that passes his way. A changed man, indeed.”

Edward wasn’t as amused as she was, though. “I’ve never gotten the one I wanted in the end, anyway.”

She handed him the rum, contemplating whether she should ask the next question or no. But since she hasn’t spoken to him in long long years, she couldn’t forgo to do so. “And who is that?”

He glared up at her, looking angry to answer but he couldn’t stop anyway. “You.”

Mary snorted a laugh once more, rum probably spattering about the table.

“You find that funny, eh do ya? Shouldn’t have told ya shite.” He nearly ripped the bottle from her and drank deep.

“Aye, I shouldn’t ‘ave asked. This place,” She waved a hand about the tavern. “It doesn’t allow you to lie or withhold the truth.”

Which is why he blurted out things he shouldn’t. “And ye knew of that little fact, now?”

“I did.” She got the rum again. Placing her lips where his had been not even a second ago. “And I do not regret hearin’ such from you one bit.”

“Shoulda known.”

“And I’d love hearing more of this new life ya ‘ave made back in London. You live in a big estate now, do ya, Kenway?”

“A modest home. It ain’t the biggest but it’s better than living on the poorer block of the city.”

“Saving those Reales bought you a good ‘nough life.” How is it that she can make such light of the situation? She isn’t on his world no longer, shouldn’t she be more sombre? Yet here she was, speaking more optimistic about his life than he can sitting in front of her.

“It wouldn’t have been half as good if it weren’t for Tessa.” Another thing he wasn’t meant to say, but this mystical place, wherever they were, had him telling Mary everything.

“She seems smart, aye. You need someone clever in yer life, Kenway. Jaysus knows how lost ya would be without.”

He chuckled. “She reminded me of you, ya know? Softer and in woman’s clothes, aye.” It was a jest Mary took well enough for she smiled. “But I couldn’t look at her without thinking of you.”

It had to be. Tessa could have been Mary’s long lost sister and Edward wouldn’t have been surprised. The same colour of eyes, the same height, even. Tessa’s hair was equally black as Mary’s, though Tessa’s was longer of length and mostly held in an up-do during the day. It wasn’t socially appropriate for a married woman or any grown woman in fact, to keep their hair unbound. London had weird standards Edward was long since disused to and had to be introduced to once again when he came to live in the city.  
Mary was free to do with her hair as she pleased, dress as she was comfortable with and walk and talk however she wanted. It was a freedom Edward would’ve favoured for Mary. She would have had a worse time in London’s society, he knew.

“Yer were searching for ghosts, Edward. Tessa’s quite unlike me and I fo’ sure ain’t like Tessa.”

“Nay, she probably wouldn’t have tolerated me as me was before.”

“Hells man, _I_ didn’t tolerate you as yous were before. Ye were selfish, pompous, sarcastic-“

“Aye, I was.”

“-Reckless, brash, disregarded the feelings of everyone around you-“

“Aye, me guess.”

“-Disloyal, a turncloak, sticking it in every slit you see-“

“Aye! Aye, I get it now, I was an arse.”

“-And an arse.” She ended with smile he wished he could wipe off her face. “But you were a good man, Edward. I believed that ‘till the end. And if Tessa saw that in you, that, indeed, we do have in common.”

The rum bottle was empty again. It has been two years since he has last drank a drop of alcohol. He should feel the effects of rum by now. “You are both immensely smart women. What possesses you to believe in the likes of me?”

“Love.”

It stilled him for a while. He believed that she was jesting but maybe this whole ‘not withholding the truth’ thing also worked both ways. She was serious though, he knew her well enough to know the difference, even if it was a long time ago. He’d never forget, not her.

“Love, eh?”

She smirked. “A powerful sort o’ witchcraft, ain’t it?”

He stared at her, wishing he had the guts enough to reach over the table and touch her. “…Yes.” Hoping she wouldn’t vanish in thin air if he did. He still wasn’t sure if this all was real.

“I’m happy for ye, mate. Tessa’s a lovely wife and a wonderful mother. And Anne was right, too. You settled down and became a great father as well.”

His daughter would disagree. “Jenny still blames me for Caroline’s death. I’ve tried all me hardest to amend me being a screwed father to her in the first half of her life.”

“I see you doing a well enough job. As well as…” This was the moment her tone wobbled, as Edward knew it would. “As well as for your son.”

“Haytham.”

He could see the emotion flashing through her eyes. Gratitude, pain, homesickness. He wondered if she could read him as easily as he could with her. Probably she could. It wasn’t hard for her to do so when she was alive, he doubt it would have changed in death. “Me guessed you would’ve liked that name.”

“Haytham,” She rolled the name over her tongue. Such a name she hasn’t spoken in years on end. “A fine choice for a boy’s name.”

“If I had another daughter she would have been called Mary.” That ached somewhere deep in his chest. In both of them. It was another secret he wouldn’t have told her, had he full control over his mouth. “But I remember ya brother’s name was Haytham. The one you lost.”

Her older brother died when she was little, he remembered that tale when she told it to him. It was the reason why she grew up dressed as a boy. Her mother couldn’t inherit a sum of money unless she had a son and Mary’s brother Haytham died before he got too old. Since women couldn’t inherit much property or money, it fell to the closest male heir. Mary pretended to be her brother Haytham, until she left to earn her fortune as a sailor.

“Aye. Him a smart boy?”

Edward shrugged. “Like him mother.”

She leaned her elbow on the table and rested her face in her palm. “Would be a waste if he had the chicken brain as him father.”

“I see death hasn’t robbed you of your humour, Mary.”

“I can’t sit around moping and regrettin’ dying and such for ever, now can I?”

“It wasn’t your fault. ‘Twas mine.”

She froze at that exclaim. Shocked, she stared at him. “What?”

Suddenly the tavern fell quiet. All the music ceased playing. The men stopped screaming. The rum stopped flowing.

“Yes.” Edward answered in a sophisticated manner. Him was no pirate no more, but a man of means. He couldn’t speak as vulgar as he used to. “It was because of me.”

“Edward…” She shook her dark head. The bottle of rum was gone too. “Edward, hush. ‘Twas not yer fault, it ne’er was. It was childbirth and-“

“Is it?” He jumped from his seat suddenly, his chair tumbling behind him. “Was it really not my fault?”

Everything disappeared then. The tavern faded away to a vast whiteness. The blue skies and equally blue seas, the sun and the palm trees, everything vanished to white nothing.

“I could have saved you. I could have tried harder to escape from the infernal prison and saved both you and Anne, but I was too much of a coward shite.”

Mary was standing now. The table and the chair she was sitting on had gone to nothing too. It was all white around him, but if Edward noticed, he did not show. He’s too deep in self-inflicted regret to take note of it. Mary was the important one anyway, and she was still in front of him. Alive, breathing, looking up at him with the most sorrowful expression he had ever witnessed on her.

And yet, Edward couldn’t stop telling her the truth. “I kept thinking that Torres and his Templar bastards would hurt Caroline if I attempted to leave. He threatened her life that day they tried you into prison. He knew everything about me and everything about Caroline. Where she lived, who her parents were, when we married… In everything but the actual words the threat was clear as day. If word had gone out of me prison break, Torres would instantly send out a fucker to hurt her.”

Pain ripped through his chest and for once he couldn’t look at Mary anymore. He turned from her, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t know Caroline passed already. They knew as little of Jenny as I did. And I could’ve gotten out of that prison a long time ago, you along with me.”

She said nothing, but he could see the tears forming in her eyes. He had never, in all the years that he had known her, seen her cry. The sight broke him more than he’d like to care to admit.  

Her tone was calm despite his outburst. Had she been alive, she would have blazed at him with the same heat he was spewing at her. “And if we have gotten out of that prison, what would have stood for us? We was pirates. King’s men were hunting for us by the hundreds.”

“ _But you would have lived!_ ”

He touched her for the first time then. She was warm when he slipped his callused hand over her soft cheek. She was clean, he noted for the first time. Her face free of soot and coal she painted her eyes with. There was a scar running from her right eyebrow to the corner of her temple. Her high cheekbones were sharp but she looked healthy and alive and so real, Edward wondered how he can ever leave her again.

“You would have lived and maybe your child too. I would’ve whisked you away to London or Swansea or Bristol and leave the lot of these West-Indies behind us. I would’ve married you and given you a comfortable life, a steady home and Haytham would have been ours. We would have grown old and ugly together, telling wild sailing tales of our youth to our grandchildren and by the end, you still would have outlasted me.”

She seemed truly effected by his words. A blush unlike one he had ever seen before rose to her cheeks, before she tried to shyly shied away from him. It was a Mary he hadn’t had the chance to meet when she was still alive, but it was still oddly pleasant to experience her like this.

“I’m… I’m not exactly the type to marry anyone, Edward.”

“I don’t give a rat’s arse if you were. I should’ve freed us. You should have lived a long life where you get to meet your child and where you got to get even more.”

She snorted again. He felt her smile under his fingers. He couldn’t believe how real she felt. How beautiful she was so close to him. “And what, you would’ve fathered those children, you dog?”

“Aye.” It was an immediate reply he didn’t even doubted the answer of. “Every five of them would have been mine.”

She looked incredulous by the number. “Five?”

“What, you wanted more?”

She smiled and a tear ran down her cheek. His thumb caught it, wiping it away from existence. “Why me? Ye could have any betty in the world. I did nothing but reprimand you ev’ry time we met. This talk is so unlike you.”

It was. But since they were in a restricted area where he can only talk the truth and is unable to hold it, he might as well spill his heart out. “Love, eh? A powerful sort of witchcraft, don’t you say?”

She sighed. When her palm touched his own face, it felt like he was hit by lightning. “Kiss me, Edward.”

And he did. It was an action he should have done before she died. When she was alive, years ago even. But James Kidd was the only woman Edward refrained from touching. She made him a better man, a good man. She taught him the way of life and freedom. She was a precious friend and soon, more than that. He didn’t want to ruin that, like he ruins everything else. And then she died before he could kiss her, before he could save her and offer her everything he just said.

She felt alive against him now. Her mouth was warm and soft and how he had dreamt of her long before they separated of doing this with her. She curled against him as he even deepened their kiss, where he wounded his hand through her dark locks and behind her neck to hold her in place. Her waist felt slender under the palm of her free hand.

If only he had the time to explore every inch of her. He would have loved to know if there were more tattoos on her body, hidden from his view by all the layers of clothes. He would have grasped the opportunity had it presented itself to kiss her skin all over and made her as familiar with his own body as he would with hers.

Her tongue was just rolling around his when she was pulling away from him. “No, wait.”

“You have to go.” There were tears in her voice, but none in her eyes, thank the Lord.

“Go, no… No, why?”

She tried to peel herself off of him, but he wasn’t letting her. “Time’s running out.”

“No, I can’t. Not again. Not after this.” He sought after her lips again, but she turned away from him.

“Edward, please. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

He wasn’t prepared to leave her yet, not again he wasn’t. He couldn’t leave her, if the first time nearly killed him, how would he fare now? “You asked for it yourself.”

“Aye and it was wrong. I should ne’er ‘ave done that.”

She shouldn’t say that. “It was exactly what I wanted to do long since before you passed, Mary.”

She nodded, indicated that she desired just as much. “You-you ‘ave to remember, that it ain’t yer fault I died, Edward. It was me time. Nothin’ you could’ve done would ‘ave changed that. But… I thank you, still.”

“For what?”

“For changing your course. For seeing our way. _For loving me_.” She whispered the last part, but he heard it loud as a canon shot. “Remember, you’re a good man, Edward. Now you have to go.”

It couldn’t end like this. Not this abruptly, not this suddenly. He wanted more time. “Why did you come? To open old wounds which I had such trouble to heal in the first place? Does it please you to see me suffer, to tell you truths you know I would’ve kept to meself?”

She touched his cheek again. Her fingers whispered over his lips and he wished he could catch them. “To give you peace.”

The whiteness around him turned whiter, brightly, blinding him. “Mary?”

“Edward.” Her voice was in the distance. “Look carefully after Haytham.”

Haytham? A flash of white, much like the one he had before when he went to sleep hurt his eyes. “Mary?!”

“Edward!”

She was gone, wasn’t she?

“Edward, wake up!”

“Tess- Tessa?”

His wife was shaking him awake, calling him, looking distraught and scared and whimpering.

“What, what’s going on?”

She whispered while she screeched in panic. “There’s people in the house Edward. I heard them. I don’t know who they are or why they are here, but they’re in the house.”

This didn’t sound all too good. It was still in the middle of the night he noted. And people breaking into their home in the dead of the night only meant one thing.

The past has caught up with him.

Instinct as an assassin returned to him faster than he would have believed. He silently walked over to their closet and fumbled behind a secret drawer to pull out the old, rusted hidden blades. They worked well enough, he tested. But it would leave nasty wounds, should they survive.

“Edward? Edward, what are those? Holy Mother Mary, where do you get those knifes? And what are you-“

He walked up to her and silenced her. “These are evil men in our house, Tess. I want you to take the children, go through the servants door and run to this address.” He pressed a paper with an address of an old Assassin’s Bureau in her hand. “Don’t stop, no matter what until you’re there. The people there will receive you kindly if you mention my name.”

“Edward, I don’t understand. How-“

“The people there will explain. We ain’t got no time, aye? Take Haytham, keep him as quiet as possible. Tell the same to Jenny and sneak out of the house and don’t come back, ya hear?”

Tessa shivered. She looked lost and panicked but she nodded. Her hair was falling about her face in a wild disarray and Mary’s name flashed through his mind once more. Jaysus, they did look alike.

He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. “No matter what happens, I love ya.”

She looked like she was about to cry. “So do I.”

Edward ran out of the room towards the footsteps he clearly heard down a level below. He was hardly hunched on the stairway railing and his suspicions were confirmed.

Templar bastards.

* * *

 

 

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**The assault to the Kenway house in which Edward sacrificed himself to let his family escape. It was the night of his death.**

 


End file.
